


crush

by belatrix



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Underage Drinking, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 13:11:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15486510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belatrix/pseuds/belatrix
Summary: Honestly, the little serial killer having a crush on him would be fucking hilariously adorable if it wasn’t so―If it wasn’tso.[Rick goes. Negan stays. And Carl is caught in the middle.]





	crush

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this, for some reason.
> 
> No actual underage _happens_ , but tagging just to be safe.

 

 

In the beginning:

There is Rick, and an exhaled curse, and the red, raised outline of a bite imprinted into sweat-slick skin. Negan stares, because he can’t not stare, and something’s suddenly going very cold inside him, dropping like a dead heart on the ground, withering away.

The air smells like dust and blood and rot, and Rick looks away from the wound on his arm like he doesn’t care. Like he’s had worse. His shoulders move into something too stiff and practiced to be a shrug. The proud, stubborn asshole.

Negan wants to shake him. Negan wants to kill him. Negan wants―

He doesn’t know what the fuck he wants.

“You can’t _die_ ,” he says, and it’s a hoarse thing, as if Rick ripped it from his throat. “You just― you can’t fucking die on me like _this_ , Rick.”

Well. Someone ought to have told him he can’t always get what he wants.

He thinks Rick did say it, once.

 

 

 

Negan runs out of coherent apologies one week into it.

He started out practical, because he couldn’t afford to not be practical in a shit-storm like this. There were the preliminaries: he brought Rick back to Alexandria like he should have, stood aside and didn’t even fucking try to interfere while all the tearful goodbyes took place. Like he should have. He didn’t run his mouth and he let them all hug each other and glare at him and his men from a distance. Like he should have.

Let it not be said that Negan doesn’t do the things he should do. Sometimes.

It was fine for the first few days. While things still needed to get done, sorted out. There was a void in the little town that called for new rules, a different game plan, and Negan dealt.

And now he’s a tangle of whiskey and leather and cigarette smoke and the scent of blood that never quite leaves and a slurred string of _sorry kid, fuck, couldn’t save him, couldn’t do shit, kid, I’m fucking sorry, should’ve saved him_ ―

“Why the hell are _you_ sorry,” the kid says, voice hollow and old, too fucking old for his face. “Why the hell would you want to save him.” He’s holding the baby in his skinny arms, clutching her like a lifeline, glaring up at Negan with all the famous ferocity of his dad.

(There are no tear tracks on his cheek. Negan wonders if he’s even cried at all.)

He stares at Carl and at the space behind him. There’s something like the outline of a man hovering just above his shoulders, an empty space carved into the air in the shape of Rick. Or maybe he’s just very, very drunk.

He stands up too abruptly, very nearly sways on his feet. Rick’s quaint little porch becomes a foggy, blurry mess around him.

Yeah. Definitely hammered.

“Get out of my house,” Carl says, with a confidence and a sharpness that is inspiring. The baby is starting to squirm with his desperate grip on her, the adorable tiny thing that can’t possibly know what grief feels like yet. Negan hates her. Negan envies her. She feels like a metaphor he really doesn’t want to think about right now.

“Yeah, I think I’ll crash here tonight, kid,” Negan says, managing the words to sound only a little slurred. “My guys’ll be fine without me for a night, I guess. Too drunk to drive an’ shit.”

Carl’s mouth, twisting into something almost cruel. “If you don’t get out, I’ll shoot you,” he threatens. He looks like he means it.

Negan gives a half-hearted laugh. It comes out scratchy, messy, horrible. “Sure thing, kid.”

He stays.

 

 

 

It’s a long night.

Negan drinks and the kid curls in on himself in a bunch of blankets downstairs, his little sister in his arms, pretends to fall asleep. People knock on the door and Carl doesn’t answer. They leave. They return, and they leave again.

Negan’s losing track of the story. He’s not sure which page of the script this was supposed to be.

 

 

 

The good people of Alexandria don’t want him here.

“We don’t want you here,” Carl says, wearing an earnestly murderous expression. He’s got better at his glares, too. His daddy would’ve been proud.

“Well, kid, I don’t give a fuck what you want,” Negan says, resting Lucille on his shoulder as he watches his men lug furniture off the trucks. Bed frames, tables, a few chairs. Some clothes, too. It's an abrupt gift to a leader-less town. He’s been generous; Alexandria has been suspicious.

He doesn’t really blame them.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” Carl growls out, and it sounds cold and dangerous and if this was a movie Negan would sincerely congratulate him on his impeccable line delivery. This isn’t a fucking movie. “But if you think you can just―”

He trails off, breathes out. Carl’s fingers are clenching around air. He’s furious and helpless and seething at the world, at Negan, at nothing, the scorching sunlight swallowing him like a dying flame, making him look smaller.

“I don’t want you here,” he says again, impatient like a child. It takes Negan the entirety of three seconds to remember that he is, in fact, a child.

Negan lets out a sound that might’ve been a sigh. “Yeah, we sure as shit established that.” Carl turns away, as if he can’t possibly stand to look at him. His jaw is twitching. “But someone needs to take care of shit, and I don’t trust any of your merry band of dicks to do that. Not yet. So you should all start being a little more fucking accommodating around here.”

There’s a lie in there somewhere, but if he catches it, the kid doesn’t call him out on it.

 

 

 

In the beginning:

The distant calling of blackbirds, a sunset as backdrop, and a frantic litany of _shit, Rick, can’t go like this, fuck you, you can’t die, come on Rick, Rick, Rick, Rick_ ―

“Do you ever shut up,” Rick says, and he sounds tired and old and only mildly exasperated. The corner of his lips, curling into the beginning of a self-deprecating smile.

In a different sequence of events, Negan did something brave, saved Rick, saved the day, made it to the end of the story, et cetera et cetera. Imagine that.

In this sequence his fingers close around Rick’s wrist, more tightly than he intended. “I’ll get you to Carson,” he says, a faint note of hysteria rising in his voice. All his words are tangled up into each other, getting stuck behind his teeth. “I’ll―”

Rick wrenches his arm free, pulls away from Negan, because this is what Rick does.

“I ain’t dying here,” he says, and Negan thinks ― _you ain’t dying anywhere_ , but Rick doesn’t want empty words. He’s not that sort of guy. “I gotta say goodbye, first.”

It hits Negan, sometimes, that Rick has a family. Friendships forged with blood. People who truly love him, and they will cry for him now. It’s a lonely thought, but only if he lets it. He doesn’t let it.

“Right,” he says, can’t come up with anything else to say. “Fine. I’ll help you get back home.”

There’s a pause, heavy with silence and the smell of death, and Rick’s eyes find his, blue and calm and defiant. The birds are still calling, and this, right here, it could be a moment―

“Let’s go, then,” Rick says, tearing his gaze away.

 

 

 

 _I don’t want you here_ , Carl keeps telling him, _I don’t want you here_ , like a broken record.

The words lose heat with each repeated time. The voice becomes less harsh. The sentiment less truthful.

The kid’s breaking apart, breaking down, and Negan almost thinks, _I take it back_. _I take it all back_.

(Almost.)

 

 

 

The little town’s in mourning, but it moves on. You can’t hope to exist in this world unless you know how to move on.

Rick’s lady assumes unofficial leadership of their tightly-knit group, even as Negan’s own men filter in and out of Alexandria daily, even as he’s the one really calling the shots.

Michonne is cool and competent in a way Negan can’t help but admire, in a way he might’ve been helplessly attracted to if this was a different version of the story. She wears her grief like a funereal shroud but refuses to let it drown her out; her face is hard and unflinching, and she stares at Negan with the promise of blood tucked carefully behind the determined set of her eyes. She’s co-operating, for now, but she’s the kind of woman that won’t stay down forever. Negan can respect that ―he’ll deal with her retribution when it comes.

If there’s one thing Negan’s good at, it’s snuffing out defiance.

No matter that he can’t bring himself to do it just yet.

The world keeps going, the earth keeps spinning, all that jazz. Carl keeps going with it, refuses to get left behind, but that was expected. There’s a newfound hollowness in his stare, which Negan pretends not to notice.

It’s a familiar process to watch; Negan himself has been through the motions before.

He just doesn’t want to remember, thank you very much. The idea of grief and pain is so fucking last season.

 

 

 

(He keeps telling himself he’s only sticking around because he’s got unfinished business with Alexandria, until it doesn’t feel so much like a lie anymore.)

 

 

 

Here is what Negan learns over the next few weeks.

Carl sleeps on the floor even now that there’s a new bed in his room, with his knees almost up to his chin, coiled up tight as if protecting an inner flame from dying out.

Carl looks at the baby as if she’s the very last thing keeping him rooted to this world, as though, were she to disappear, he would come unhinged from reality. Like he would go insane.

Carl sometimes goes up on the roof, sitting precariously on the edge like he’s thought about jumping, feet dangling in the air. His profile is pale and thin and impossibly angry against the bone-dry sky.

Carl always keeps a small light on at night.

Carl is starting to look at Negan with less hatred in his eye, in the sharp lines of his face. Sometimes he doesn’t look at him at all, focusing instead on a spot somewhere to Negan’s left. Sometimes he looks at Negan’s mouth.

Carl is a child. Carl is not a child.

Carl doesn’t know which page of the script they’re supposed to have reached, either.

 

 

 

Somewhere along the way:

One of Alexandria’s scavenging teams raids a gym and comes back with weights, mats, towels, and a punching bag. Carl takes it to his dad’s house, locks it up inside his room, wraps his hands in white cloth and spends his nights hitting and grunting and crying and kicking at it.

Negan sits in the corner, rolling a cigarette. “You’re getting stronger, kid,” he says, a wry thing accompanied by a wry smile after Carl throws a punch so violent it nearly knocks off the entire support stand.

A sharp, exhausted exhale. “Yeah. Better watch your back, soon I’ll be able to kick your ass, piece of cake.”

Negan pats his pockets for a light. “Sure. I know.”

 

 

 

In the beginning:

Rick’s on his knees, Rick's trembling as he looks up at Negan, Rick’s face is a sweaty, bloody mess and his gaze is a faraway blue thing ―no, scratch that, crumple the paper, throw it away. This is not the current version of the story. Get a blank page, start again.

In the beginning:

Rick’s on his knees, yeah, but he’s there because he’s tired, because he’s bleeding, because there’s a gaping wound in his gut and a bite torn into his arm, and Negan puts an arm around his shoulders, helps him get back on his feet.

“Ain’t dying here,” Rick keeps staying, a stubborn, muttered mantra. “Need to see Carl, Judith. Michonne. Everyone.” _Need to say goodbye_.

Negan doesn’t want to care. This is truer than anything anyone’s ever accused him of. The part where he fails to not care, too.

The near future is uncoiling before him; look Carl in the eye, _hey, kid, sorry your daddy died_ ; get one of his own guys to run Alexandria; smooth things over; _sorry he’s dead_ ; keep an eye on their trade routes; _sorry he’s gone_ ; _sorry I didn’t_ ―

“Don’t _hold_ me, Negan, I can walk by myself.”

Rick, wobbling on his feet, his face determined. There’s a streak of red on his cheek. Negan tries not to look.

 

 

 

“I’m gonna drink too,” Carl announces one night, with all the righteous confidence of a rebellious teenager.

Negan arches an eyebrow, downs the rest of his glass. And laughs. “Can I see some ID first?”

It’s not early enough to be night and not late enough to be morning, and Alexandria is fast asleep ―although, probably not. Negan’s pretty sure everyone just spends the dark hours sharpening the knives they keep under their pillows, waiting for the chance to jump him. Well, he wishes them all good fucking luck with that.

“Shut up,” Carl says, with only half-hearted exasperation. Probably because the other half’s rotting away in a makeshift grave behind the town’s little church. “Just give me that bottle.”

“No, seriously, kid,” Negan says, leaning back against the pillows on the couch, and honestly, why the _fuck_ is he still here, he really shouldn’t be here, “sit the fuck down and have some lemonade or something. This stuff’s for grown-ups only.”

Carl huffs out something that could have sounded like a laugh to a partly deaf audience. “You don’t get to talk to me like that,” he says, _there_ ’s the famous fun-sized fury again, “you’re not my dad.”

And the kid freezes, his whole body going slack and immobile as soon as the words have left his mouth. He blinks uselessly, and Negan’s just sitting there, empty glass going cold and colder in his hand, trying to think of something to say that’s not terrible, something that’s not a bullet between the lungs, something, anything―

Carl swallows down air, bile, whatever, and when he speaks again his voice is horribly, painfully small, a breath away from tears. “Just give me the bottle,” he says. Whispers. “Please.”

Negan does, without another word, because he’s just that pathetic when the kid is crying.

 

 

 

Carl gets so drunk he can’t walk, slumps into the couch, limp and boneless.

And he talks about Rick.

Stupid things, like how he would play horrible, horrible music for _old people_ in the car, how Carl’s mom kept trying to teach him how to cook food that _could actually be eaten by humans, Jesus_ , how close they were with his best friend, Shane, how he’d always try and come home earlier from work when Carl was sick and watch cartoons with him on the couch, how he taught Carl to swim, throw a football, ride a bike, how, how, how.

He smells like he could catch on fire, blood and salt and tears but really mostly alcohol.

Negan blinks, stares, drinks his own drink, because _seriously_? They’ve been through the world breaking apart, through blood and bullets and monsters and wars and _this_ is what the kid chooses to remember about Rick? It’s so fucking childish, so incredibly ridiculous, so―

Rick would like this. Rick would probably prefer to be remembered like this.

“I miss him,” he says, “ _dad_. I miss him. And thought I wouldn’t so much? ‘cause so ma― so many people, y’ know, gone, _dead_ , and was fine, but I miss dad. Dead. Dad. I―”

“…miss him,” Negan finishes, looking everywhere except the sobbing kid by his side, whose vocabulary seems to have been reduced down to fifty words, forty of which are all about missing his dead dad, “yeah, fuck, I know.”

(Carl passes out with his head on Negan’s shoulder, drooling all over Negan’s leather jacket.

Another thing Negan pretends not to notice.)

 

 

 

Spending half a morning holding a sobbing kid’s ridiculously long hair back while he vomits is _not_ what Negan stuck around Alexandria for.

Trying and failing to convince an outraged ragtag mob outside the house that _no, the kid isn’t crying his single eye out because of me, so kindly fuck off now, thanks_ , isn’t, either.

Somewhere in the back of the house the baby’s screaming, and out on the porch Arat is trying to keep the Very Concerned townspeople at bay while Dwight rattles off a list of supplies running low back at the Sanctuary.

Carl is still in the bathroom, shoulders quaking and head bowed miserably over the toilet. His arms are hanging uselessly at his sides.

Negan closes his eyes, resists the urge to just pinch the bridge of his nose and let out a theatric longsuffering sigh, and grabs a glass of water before heading back to the bathroom.

All the while, he’s still wondering just when and how the fuck he became _this_ guy.

 

 

 

The next day:

Carl’s gaze keeps slipping to Negan’s mouth.

Negan keeps drinking and tries to pretend he hasn’t left a whole compound to nearly starve, waiting for his return.

Michonne drops by to take Carl for a walk, take Judith to the neighbors, and subtly threaten Negan with dismemberment.

Nothing happens.

 

 

 

“You were in lo― you wanted my dad, right?”

Yes.

“What the fuck.”

Carl makes an impatient sound. “My dad,” he says, stretching the word out like Negan didn’t get it the first time because he’s stupid, “wanted to fuck him, be with him, whatever. You.”

 _Yes_.

“Carl.”

Negan stands in the middle of Rick’s pretty house, in the middle of Rick’s living room, staring down at Rick’s kid and his pale, hollowed face, earnest as a devoted lover’s, intent as a killer’s.

“Just checking,” Carl says, shrugging, and it’s the same stiff movement, the same proud, unconcerned rising and falling of a shoulder, the exact fucking same as Rick’s. And Negan just wants to sit down. “I mean, it was kinda obvious. You’re not a subtle guy.”

“ _Carl_.”

Running out of things to say, being rendered speechless by a glaring teenager, Negan’s becoming horrible cliché after horrible cliché. Seriously ―what the hell has _happened_ to the script.

“ _Ne-gan_ ,” Carl says, a mocking lilt to it. But there’s no real acid in his voice. Only ―tiredness. Like his dad. Just like his fucking dad. He steps closer, takes a breath, “just wanted to make sure.”

“Don’t fucking go there, kid,” Negan says, because he feels tired now, too, because he feels like he wants to kill something, because he feels like he’s going to fall on his knees on Rick’s nice floor in the space between his next two breaths, and then this whole thing will become even sadder, even more terrible than it already is.

Lamer. He wanted to think the word _lamer_ , not sadder.

“Shut the fuck up, Negan.” It comes out of Carl’s mouth a little wobbly, a miniscule pause before the first word; as if he had to make himself say it.

And then he’s reaching up, all fierce teenage determination, and pressing his dry, chapped lips to Negan’s, and maybe Negan should have fucking guessed this was going to happen. Or maybe he should have stopped trying to pretend this wasn’t going to happen, and done an actual something to stop it from fucking happening.

It lasts for all of five seconds. It’s messy and fumbling and Carl’s moving his mouth like he has no idea what the right way to do it even is, urgent and rushed. He tastes like awful canned food and the forest and something metallic, something that feels too much like blood. He slips his tongue into Negan's mouth without preamble, an abrupt, unpracticed statement that carries too many things with it.

Negan pushes him away.

Carl’s face is ashen. For the whole next moment, Negan comes up with a hundred different awfully cruel things to say to him, each one as carefully poised to cut as a dagger, because he doesn’t know what else to do with the things he wants. And he ends up saying none of them.

“You want me,” Carl says, low and hoarse but somehow, somehow, terribly sure of the truth of his words. There’s no question mark at the end, there.

“You’re Rick’s kid,” Negan replies, for some reason.

The world seems to stop for half a breath. Carl blinks once, twice. “Yeah, no shit,” he mutters, and then he’s turning on his heel, running up the stairs at a nearly frantic pace. Negan hears a door open and close so violently the whole house almost rattles with the force of it.

He breathes out. Decides that, yeah, he’s definitely leaving tomorrow. Going back home.

He doesn’t have a fucking _home_ , but that’s not something to think of now.

And if he locks himself in Rick’s bathroom later, if he leans his head against the wall, if the sound of metal and leather resonates all around him as he fumbles with his belt, if he tries and fails not to think of Rick’s blue eyes while his hand slips down and wraps around his cock, if he has to bite his lip to keep a groan reined in, if the image of Rick in his mind almost, _almost_ shifts to Carl as he comes ―no one’ll have to know any of it.

The thing is, a good guy wouldn’t―

 

 

 

(There’s really only one thing to know about Negan. He is not a good guy.)

 

 

 

Honestly, the little serial killer having a crush on him would be fucking hilariously adorable if it wasn’t so―

If it wasn’t _so_.

He doesn’t know what to call it. He doesn’t know if he wants to find the right word for how to call it.

 

 

 

In the beginning:

There is Rick, and an exhaled curse, and the red, raised outline of a bite imprinted into sweat-slick skin. Negan stares, because he can’t not stare, and something’s suddenly going very cold inside him, dropping like a dead heart on the ground, withering away.

The air smells like dust and blood and rot, and Rick looks away from the wound on his arm like he doesn’t care. Like he’s had worse. His shoulders move into something too stiff and practiced to be a shrug. The proud, stubborn asshole.

Negan wants to shake him. Negan wants to kill him. Negan wants―

He closes the space between them, rests a gloved hand on the side of Rick’s throat, and presses their mouths together. It’s harsher, sharper than he meant; there are teeth and Rick makes a sound like he’s hurt, but one of his hands is twisting around the zippers of Negan’s jacket, and he’s kissing back. Rick’s kissing him back.

“You can’t die,” he breathes into Rick’s mouth, a messy, stuttered thing, “you can’t just fucking _die_ on me, Rick.”

“You ain't done deciding what I can and can’t do,” Rick says hoarsely, pulling away, almost rolling his eyes. “Well. Not gonna do what you want this time, Negan.”

Negan almost laughs. He wants to laugh. But he’s very certain something very ugly will come out of his mouth if he tries to.

(Rick kissed him back.)

And now Rick’s staring up at him, blue eyes wide and hard and earnest as a devoted lover’s, intent as a killer’s, Rick’s grabbing his hands and Rick’s making him promise things, _don’t hurt them, don’t hurt anyone, help them, save them, take care of Carl, don’t let anything happen to Carl_ ―

Because Rick’s not stupid. He knows Negan would promise anything, now. Anything, to those eyes.

He wonders just when and how the fuck he became this guy.

 

 

 

Somewhere along the way:

He should go.

(He stays.)

 

 


End file.
